But, I have to say, as I was driving around today, there is really nothing more beautiful than seeing the American flag waving in the wind.  There is nothing more empowering, nothing more freeing.

And, it is really no more complex than that.  To my fellow Freedom Fighters, Patriots, and God-Fearing Citizens.

- Tisha Casida

If it is a question of whether or not we believe in the future of our Country, then today I must ask and answer that question.  We are Good Americans.  I am tired of the fear.

Perceptions rule the real song and dance every day, however our perceptions are formed by three major entities:  the people that we believe we love,  the people we believe that we hate, and the mediums in which those two operate.

We are Good Americans.  There are good people, there are bad people, there are profitable events taking place and there are unprofitable events taking place.

What do we do?  What can we do?  We are not sure quite yet, but no matter what, there are a core of us who believe this,

That we are Good Americans.

Excerpts taken from http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=35801

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul – United States House of Representatives
Statement Introducing the Private Option Health Care Act  – May 27, 2010

Madam Speaker, I rise to introduce the Private Option Health Care Act. This bill places individuals back in control of health care by replacing the recently passed tax-spend-and-regulate health care law with reforms designed to restore a free market health care system.

The major problems with American health care are rooted in government policies that encourage excessive reliance on third-party payers. The excessive reliance on third-party payers removes incentives for individual patients to concern themselves with health care costs. Laws and policies promoting Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) resulted from a desperate attempt to control spiraling costs. However, instead of promoting an efficient health care system, HMOs further took control over health care away from patients and physicians. Furthermore, the third-party payer system creates a two-tier health care system where people whose employers can afford to offer “Cadillac” plans have access to top quality health care, while people unable to obtain health insurance from their employers face obstacles in obtaining quality health care.

The Private Option Health Care Act gives control of health care back into the hands of individuals through tax credits and tax deductions, improving Health Savings Accounts and Flexible Savings Accounts. Specifically, the bill:

A. Provides all Americans with a tax credit for 100% of health care expenses. The tax credit is fully refundable against both income and payroll taxes;
B. Allows individuals to roll over unused amounts in cafeteria plans and Flexible Savings Accounts (FSA);
C. Provides a tax credit for premiums for high-deductible insurance policies connected with a Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and allows seniors to use funds in HSAs to pay for medigap policies;
D. Repeals the 7.5% threshold for the deduction of medical expenses, thus making all medical expenses tax deductible.

TO READ MORE FOLLOW THE REFERENCE BELOW…

Reference:

Campaign for Liberty. (2010). Retrieved on May 30th from http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=35801.

This particular Act raises questions about the true safety and security of our food system.  There are continuously recalls of various food products: lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, peanut butter, ground beef, etc.  However, instead of focusing on mitigating the problem, perhaps we should look at what is causing this problem in the first place (for example, an extremely large, unsafe, and unsustainable food system).

1.  S. 510 will subject small, local food providers to the same broad federal regulatory oversight that is required by large multinational corporations (for most small businesses this kind of red tape will put them out of business).  MOST dangerous outbreaks of food-related illnesses come from large corporations – NOT small family farms.  More regulations mean more cash-out-flow for small farms, and this will put small, local companies out of business.  That is the last thing that we want – our LOCAL, sustainable suppliers to not able to grow food for our local communities.

2 Adding regulations, record-keeping obligations and risk-based preventative controls (i.e. HACCP), will present a burden to small producers that will  hurt their cash-flows and operations.  The less people we have locally growing food, the more expensive, unsafe, and unsustainable our food supply will be.

3. The USDA serves a very important purpose with small farms and provide many useful and beneficial services.  Having the FDA involved with small-farms and local food systems is adding another level of bureaucracy and red tape to an industry that is already struggling.

4. Food safety and security means  a diversified, vibrant local food system served by local producers and community members.  KNOW YOUR FARMER – that, my friends, is food safety and security.

Read the Bill, Know What’s In It, and if you Support Family Farmers – Call Your Senators and Tell Them To Not Approve This!

Read the Bill HERE.

- Joni Cave

People who own or are employed by small businesses know the advantages and disadvantages of such.  First of all, the process of getting hired is insurmountably easier to go through the hiring process, to get to know “the boss”, and to have reasonable expectations of what is expected of you.  If you aren’t doing your job, you are fired.  The “disadvantages” often revolve around benefits, health care coverage, and something we call “stability”.

Not sure if you have been watching the news or not, but even being employed by “the big” companies seems to be quite unstable – benefits are questionable and you immediately tie yourself to an entire industry (which unfortunately is or will be regulated out of existence if we are not careful).

In a perfect world?  Well, there is no such thing.  However, one could start to look at supporting local businesses and local economies in more ways than purchasing items from them.  We support our local communities by believing in each other, and believing in the businesses and business owners – we start our own businesses and take that leap of faith.

Our contributor, Tamrah Jo Ortiz expands on the subject on her blog: Productivity in the Workplace – Imagine That!

A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to visit a 2nd grade classroom representing the program, Junior Achievement.  Our lesson for that morning was “Our Community”, from which I had the opportunity to enlighten these young minds about:

1.) What makes up a community

2.) How production of goods works (what production in industry is)

3. ) What taxes are

4.) How elections work

In talking to these students about elections, I emphasized over and over again the importance of their vote and their voice because of our role as citizens in a DEMOCRACY, however as the words rolled off of my tongue, I felt like I was lying.  At one time, I did feel that my vote counted, but as I was speaking the words that day, I no longer believed, I was just going through the motions of saying what I was supposed to say.

Why?  How have I become so cynical about what a democracy is?  Well, that is very simple – a democracy is NOT what the founders and framers of our Constitution had wanted as a FORM OF GOVERNMENT. A Democracy (either direct or representative) is rule by The Majority.  This majority can be whoever is in power at the time based on elections, but that majority can abuse those powers in a tyrannical way if not constrained by a constitution (a constitution or ruling document that can easily be ignored if a majority has that power).

It is a REPUBLIC that is distinctly and strictly controls The Majority in order to protect Individual’s God-given unalienable rights (which ALSO PROTECTS THE MINORITY).  A Republic can be representative still, and elections still take place, and the Majority still has a role, HOWEVER, all of these actions are strictly contained and constrained BY THE PEOPLE whose charge is to constitutionally limit government.  It is the PEOPLE’S jobs to hold elected representatives responsible, and it is up to the people to continually be a part of legislative decisions that affect their communities and country.

When I was speaking the other day, I was speaking of something that I do not believe is the foundation of this country.  We were not founded as a democracy – we were founded as a REPUBLIC (the very words in our pledge of allegiance), and if we were to hold true to that and fight for that, we would see a very different reality.

By Tisha Casida

In my opinion, to restore constitutional rule in these United States, the repeal of the XVIth and XVIIth Amendments is of paramount importance. I’m sure all of you are familiar with the XVIth Amendment, the infamous income tax amendment. Many of you are probably not familiar with the XVIIth Amendment which changed how US Senators were ‘elected’, a change that took the power of the state governments away and replaced it with ‘two houses of the people’ in congress, effectively eliminating one of the most important checks and balances in the US Constitution. Both these amendments, along with the XVIIIth Amendment, prohibition, were ‘gifts’ to us from the early progressives. One might say ‘gifts that keep on giving’.

For the record, repealing the XVIth Amendment does not prevent the federal government from implementing an ‘income’ tax. The federal government has always had the authority to do so and has done so from time to time in our nation’s history. Abraham Lincoln had congress implement an income tax to pay the debt incurred by the Civil War, well before the XVIth Amendment was ratified. Once the war debt was paid the tax was repealed. The same pattern was followed for WWI even though the XVIth Amendment was in effect. It was at the end of WWII that this pattern was ‘broken’ and the tax was not repealed.

Before continuing I’d like to point out that many people (myself among them) believe that income in the sense of the income tax is money earned from investments (stocks, bonds, real-estate etc.) not wages. Research I did some time ago showed that all the Supreme Court cases on the XVIth Amendment were related to investment earnings not wages. And after the XVIth was ratified people paid income tax on their investments, but not on their wages. As far as I can tell (and if anyone out there has research to the contrary please let me know) the only time wages were taxed was in time of war, until the end WWII. As a matter of fact I recently saw a ‘Donald Duck’ cartoon that was shown in all the movie theatres in the US during WWII asking people to ‘voluntarily’ start paying taxes on their wages. But I digress.

The real evil in the XVIth Amendment is in the words ‘without apportionment among the several states’. What does that mean? Blacks Law Dictionary defines apportion ‘to divide and distribute proportionally’ and, in regard to taxes states ‘the apportionment of a tax consists in a selection of the subjects to be taxed, and in laying down the rule by which to measure the contribution which each of these subjects shall make to the tax’, and Wiktionary defines:

to apportion (third-person singular simple present apportions, present participle apportioning, simple past and past participle apportioned)

1. (transitive) To divide and distribute portions of a whole.

The controlling party had apportioned the voting districts such that their party would be favored in the next election.

1. (transitive) Specifically, to do so in a fair and equitable manner; to allocate proportionally.

The children were required to dump all of their Halloween candy on the table so that their parents could apportion it among them.

From the above, and the second most evil part of the XVIth Amendment ‘and without regard to any census or enumeration’ (the restriction on how taxes were to be determined across each state), I conclude that the XVIth Amendment was deliberately designed to allow congress to institute a progressive/socialist/communist/marxist graduated income tax. In other words, the XVIth Amendment allows congress to punish the successful by stealing the fruits of their labors and to buy off the unsuccessful, making it easier for the thieves to stay in office. Also, it is the tool they used to establish class warfare in the USA.

A side note, it is clear that the members of congress are in the category of ‘the rich’. They either start off rich and get richer or enter congress with little and leave with a lot. So when people you know start complaining that the rich don’t ‘pay their fair share’ of taxes ask them if they really believe that the members of congress are going to raise taxes on themselves without a loophole so they don’t have to pay.

How would the founders view this? James Madison said:

“A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.”

James Madison, Essay on Property, March 29, 1792

“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.”

James Madison, Essay on Property, March 29, 1792

“The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets.”

James Madison, Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787

And Thomas Jefferson said:

“Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.“

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1784

“Taxes on consumption, like those on capital or income, to be just, must be uniform.”

Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1823

“Excessive taxation… will carry reason and reflection to every man’s door, and particularly in the hour of election.“

Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1798

And Alexander Hamilton said:

“When avarice takes the lead in a state, it is commonly a forerunner of its fall.”
A Letter from Publius, October-November 1778

“They [taxes] will in the end be borne by all classes; yet it is of the greatest importance that no one should sink under the immediate pressure. The great art is to distribute the public burdens well and not suffer them, either first, or last, to fall too heavily upon parts of the community; else distress and disorder must ensue. A shock given to any part of the political machine vibrates through the whole.”

The Continentalist VI, 1782

“Experience will teach us that no government costs so much as a bad one.”

The Continentalist VI (LOA, p. 115)

There is a lot more from these and other writers but I think I’ve made my point, the XVIth Amendment is not a friend to liberty.  We want it repealed.

I’ll discuss the XVIIth Amendment in my next offering.

By: Joni Cave

In attempting to decide and decipher the fate of my Country, there has been a lot of talk about State sovereignty and states succeeding from the Union in an effort to keep their autonomy.  In these talks there is much discussion and debate about the 10th Amendment, the power that it holds for States, and the fact that it is in our Constitution for a reason.

In two articles from the 10th Amendment Center, Bryce Shonka did a great job of detailing this phenomena, you can find his articles here: http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/09/the-federal-government-is-not-the-united-states/

And here:

http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/10/sovereignty-resolutions-a-message-to-the-united-states/

Now THAT is power to the people!

Two EPA attorneys disagree with the actions of Cap & Trade

http://www.americansolutions.com/energytax/2009/11/even-epa-lawyers-now-say-cap-and-trade-wont-work.php

Action Item: Save the environment, and start locally to make a difference. No new taxes, only programs that are proven to work, and those programs should come from the PEOPLE, not be mandated by government.

“Supporting local communities. Building local economies.”

www.GoodAmericanPost.com

Since then, each succeeding generation has dealt with many seemingly grave issues of their time, yet when viewed through the prism of history these issues pale in perspective.  This publication is not focused on topical issues and emotions which drive us apart, but rather this periodical will highlight and cheer the many amazing, positive, productive, and sustainable activities thriving in our country and our communities.

We believe that our country is not only built upon the effective foundation of checks and balances, but that we also still hold the power, as citizens and as consumers, to create the positive changes necessary to see the American Dream thrive.